Pseudo aromatic electronic system

Conjugation of the 7t-electrons of the carbon-carbon double bond with the LUMO sulfur 3d-orbitals would be expected to stabilize the Hiickel 4n -I- 2 (n = 0) array of n-electrons in the thiirene dioxide system. No wonder, therefore, that the successful synthesis of the first member in this series (e.g. 19b) has initiated and stimulated several studies , the main objective of which was to determine whether or not thiirene dioxides should be considered to be aromatic (or pseudo-aromatic ) and/or to what extent conjugation effects, which require some sort of n-d bonding in the conjugatively unsaturated sulfones, are operative within these systems. The fact that the sulfur-oxygen bond lengths in thiirene dioxides were found to be similar to those of other 802-containing compounds, does not corroborate a Hiickel-type jr-delocalization... 

The behaviour of the frontier electrons was also attributed to a certain type of electron delocalization between the reactant and the reagent 40). A concept of pseudo-n-orbital was introduced by setting up a simplified model, and the electron delocalization between the 71-electron system of aromatic nuclei and the pseudo-orbital was considered to be essential to aromatic substitutions. The pseudo-orbital was assumed to be built up out of the hydrogen atom AO attached to the carbon atom at the reaction center and the AO of the reagent species, and to be occupied by zero, one, and two electrons in electrophilic, radical, and nucleophilic reactions. A theoretical quantity called "superdelocalizability was derived from this model. This quantity will be discussed in detail later in Chap. 6. 

The planar geometry and equal N—S bond lengths suggest that the 10-u electron systems, such as (15), have substantial aromatic character. Substituents at the carbon atoms at positions three and seven with 7t-donor capacity can induce pseudo-Jahn-Teller distortion leading to the bent, bicyclic 8-7t system with the S—S transannular partial bond <84JA3437>. 

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